


when your love's out of harm's way

by sagemb



Category: Vampire Academy & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Homophobia, M/M, Unrequited Love, episodic storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 16:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12016566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb
Summary: "Eddie’s roommates with Ryan, not Mason. It’s fine though, because Ryan’s his friend too even if he likes Mason a lot better; they’ve been best friends since third grade. Sure there’s been longer friendships, but it isn’t a competition.They’re never self-conscious around each other. That’s how this works."Ten years of Eddie's life: learning to live with shame, with fear, with unrequited love, with loss, with himself.





	when your love's out of harm's way

**Author's Note:**

> So in early August I said to objectiveheartmuscle, a dear friend and fantastic writer whose fics I beta, "What if I wrote a fic about Eddie and Mason just to piss off [a reviewer who's left nasty messages on a couple of my friends' works]?" She was all for it, so here we are.

Here at age eleven: Eddie and Mason sitting with Shane and a couple of Moroi boys, learning to swear and not sound afraid of it. The Moroi boys say that they hear their cool older brothers say these things.

_ Shit, fuck, damn. _

Soon they graduate into more complicated vocabulary, learn to string together their own formulae. Eddie likes books and writes his own stories sometimes, and creative cursing is kinda like coming up with your own sentences, he thinks, using words that’ll pack a punch. And punching is something he’s always been pretty good at doing.

The bootlegged B-movies that the kids on the upper campus pass around fall into his and Mason’s hands every once in a while, and they pick up a few new phrases from old shitty Wild West films.  _ Bastard, son of a whore _ — he’ll hear older boys use some of these, too, but not as much so maybe that’s why it takes him a while to learn what they mean. A while longer to realize—

_ That means us. _

 

* * *

 

 

His mom lives in Montana too, a bit north of Billings; her name’s Jennifer and the men who come around sometimes like to call her Jenny. She’s a waitress at a Moroi-owned club on the other side of town from their duplex.

Eddie only goes back home in the summers.

He’s never asked about his father. He supposes it doesn’t matter whether he was just another rich Moroi man or if he was royalty or if he was a fucking prince. Whoever he is, he’s done fuck-all for Jennifer and her son. 

Mason doesn’t know who his dad is either, but his mom works as a nurse and his uncle guards a Drozdov lord, which is cooler than what Eddie’s got.

 

* * *

 

 

He kisses a girl for the first time when he’s thirteen, during a game of truth or dare. Her lip gloss is sticky and tastes like artificial strawberry, but it’s nice even though neither of them are really sure of what they’re doing. Mason and Rose whoop and clap after.

The girl is Meredith, and she’s bright red and isn't able to look him in the eye for a week.

 

* * *

 

He’s roommates with Ryan, not Mason, because roommate assignments are random. It’s fine though, because Ryan’s his friend too even if he likes Mason a lot better; they’ve been best friends since third grade. Sure there’s been longer friendships, but it isn’t a competition.

They’re never self-conscious around each other. That’s how this works.

 

* * *

 

Lots of girls giggle and whisper at both of them. Eddie knows that they’re both pretty good-looking, him with his tan skin and sandy hair, Mason with his red-as-fire curls and blue eyes and the splash of freckles across his pretty nose. Mason hit his growth spurt earlier than Eddie, so he’s a couple inches taller than him.

Eddie’s jealous. It’s a good look on Mason.

 

* * *

 

One night he’s in the locker room after training, only the curtains between all the shower stalls are gone for some reason and Mason’s the only other person taking a shower. He’s lean and a little more muscled than Eddie and his eyes are closed into the spray and Eddie’s entranced.

Eddie wakes up to realize that he’s hard.

After he’s jerked himself off he buries his head under the pillow and thinks,  _ oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. _

(He doesn’t cry or anything, and he doesn’t try to figure it out on the Internet or whatever. This isn’t the first time he’s had a dream like this— he’s dreamt about girls before, like the hot freshman Moroi girl who tutors him in algebra. But it’s the first time he’s dreamt about Mason.

He figures it’s normal. Brains are weird and dreams are weird. Puberty’s fucking weird. Everyone's probably had a wet dream that they were weirded out by when they woke up. Better not to think of it as a big deal.)

 

* * *

 

“Have you heard?” Mason demands, slamming his backpack on the table. Eddie startles and looks up from his notebook.

“Heard what?” he asks.

“Rose and Lissa,” replies Mason. At Eddie’s blank look, he continues, “Seriously, you haven’t?”

“Just tell me what’s going on, dude.”

“They’ve left,” says Mason.

“Left? What does that mean?”

“I mean they fucking left, Eddie. Like, snuck out of the Academy. They’re gone now. Everyone’s looking for them.”

“Why’d they leave?” Eddie asks, bewildered. “Does— does it have anything to do with what Rose did at that party?”

“No clue,” Mason says, shrugging. “But they’ve been, you know, kinda weird since, well, Lissa’s family died.”

Eddie nods. He’s noticed.

Mason scowls. “I think they could have told us.”

“They probably didn’t want any of the adults finding out,” says Eddie.

“But we wouldn’t have told!” Mason throws his hands up in the air. “I mean, why would we?”

Eddie shrugs. “They’ll get found soon. I mean, Lissa’s the last Dragomir. I bet every guardian in the country’s got the memo.” He pauses. “Shit, Rose is gonna be in so much trouble when they come back.”

Mason smiles, soppy and lovesick. “She is, isn’t she?”

 

* * *

 

A month passes and Rose and Lissa are still gone. Mason’s turned surly and broody, but he’s still holding out hope.

Three months, and there’s a rumor that they’ve already been killed by Strigoi but it’s being kept a secret so the death of the Dragomir line won’t be public information.

Six months, and Mason’s carefreeness begins to regrow, fragile and new. Eddie thinks that with Rose gone, maybe, just maybe he could—

A year. They bring in a new guardian to head the investigation. His name is Dimitri Belikov and he’s stoic, terrifying. They say he’s killed six Strigoi.

Some of the Moroi girls giggle when they pass him in the hallways. He mostly just looks tired, though he  _ is _ pretty hot, tall and long-haired; dark, intense eyes. Eddie wonders what it would feel like to run his hands over his deltoids, then thinks,  _ oh fuck, not this. _

But it’s only physical attraction, isn’t it. Not anything past basic animal lust, not like with— well.

Not like with Mason.

 

* * *

 

Here at age sixteen: he sees a few royal boys jeering at Christian Ozera across the cafeteria.

“Oh my fucking God,” says Jesse Zeklos, with all the dumb teenage bravado he can muster. “What’s up with that stupid hair? So fucking  _ gay _ , man.”

The rest of the boys at his table snicker.

“Hey Ozera! You know that? Ya queer! Ya fuckin’ loser!”

Christian Ozera acts like he hasn’t heard. Eddie stares at the carton of chocolate milk on his tray. He’s known for several months now, and he knows that Jesse Zeklos probably just picked it up somewhere, doesn’t actually mean what he’s really saying, but  _ shit— that means me. _

_ It’s me. _

He skips Chem, goes down to the weight room with a pair of gloves. He goes at a boxing dummy, just punches, just breathes.

 

* * *

 

He has sex for the first time when he’s sixteen. It’s with Meredith, again, and he comes embarrassingly fast. They've been dating for a month or two, but she breaks up with him pretty soon after that, saying, “You’re sweet, Eddie, but I just feel like you aren’t into this.”

He doesn’t have the strength to argue. Junior year midterms are brutal, and he’s been staying up late studying for them.

 

* * *

 

And one night it comes: tipsy, half to prove a point to Mason that he’s still got other people, too. Mason’s pissed about things more than usual: it’s Rose’s seventeenth birthday and he looks like he hasn’t forgotten it for a single second all day. It almost hurts Eddie to look at him like this, so heartsick, the same way Eddie feels about him.

_ You and I, we’re the same. Going for the people who won’t love us back. No wonder we’re best friends. _

He sets down his cup of beer. It’s probably at least a quarter hooch— Jason Szelsky knows how to brew that shit and how not to get caught, fuck knows how he manages it. Eddie’s hands don’t shake.

He thumbs over the curve of Mason’s jawline, pulls him in for a kiss. And maybe it’s just because Eddie’s looking for something,  _ anything _ , but he feels Mason almost, almost kiss him back. Slack and surprised.

He breaks away and opens his eyes. Mason’s staring at him.

“Eddie,” says Mason. “The fuck?”

Eddie folds his arms into his chest, looks down at his ratty Converse, shivers. “I didn’t really mean to. To do that. I know you aren’t… it’s fine, okay? Forget about it.”

Mason looks away.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie tries again, his voice hoarse.. “I don’t wanna fuck things up.”

Now all of a sudden Mason is back; he steps forward and scrubs a hand over his eyes, wipes his mouth. “Eddie. Hey listen, Eddie. I don’t know what that was, or what you’re— look, I don’t really care, okay? But I don’t think I can… you know.”

“I know,” says Eddie. “It’s fine, it really is.”

“No, Eddie—”

“I get it, okay,” he whispers. “Fuck, Mase.  You’re my best friend, and that’s always been true. Don’t you think I get it?” After all, he thinks, it’s not like Mason owes it to him. Doesn’t matter how much Eddie feels for him.

Mason is quiet again, this time for a while. Then, horribly:

“If it was gonna be any—” he stops, exhales. “If it was gonna be any guy. It’d be you. You know?”

Eddie nods. Mason’s being so careful about it, so fucking  _ nice _ and Eddie doesn’t know why he isn’t happier about the fact that Mason isn’t telling him to  _ fuck off, Eddie, I’m not fucking gay _ . Why an easy letdown isn’t what he’d hoped for, even when it’s so much better than what he’d imagined at night, half-taken by fear and sleep.

“Yeah, I know,” he says again.

Mason slides a hand over his shoulder. Gentle, brotherly. The only time Eddie’s ever flinched when Mason touched him.

So there it is. Breathe easy now; you’ve bared yourself true.

 

* * *

 

There is no triumphant return of the prodigal son in this story. There is, however, Rose and Lissa being shepherded through the campus commons by an entourage of guardians. Criminals headed to trial.

On Mason’s face is the pride of a man seeing home for the first time in years. He expresses this to Rose a few hours later, like a good seventeen-year-old boy does, by joking about her naked. And like a good best friend, Eddie joins in. He can’t say it’s not fun.

It’s good to have Rose back.

In one of the lounges, Mason scrubs a hand over his eyes and says, “Fuck, dude. She’s gotten even hotter.”

Eddie laughs. “Oh man. You’re so far gone, it’s fucking embarrassing.”

“I know,” Mason says, not sounding altogether ashamed of it.  “You think I should ask her about what it was like out there?”

Eddie shrugs. “I dunno. She might not wanna talk about some of it, but hey, she’ll tell you about the food.”

“Remember that time she cleared out the cafeteria’s pizza bites?” Mason asks, smiling fondly down at his notes on the Aztec empire.

“Hey, gotta love a girl who can eat.”

Mason tries to hide his face with his notebook.

Eddie says, “You’re a fucking tomato, Ashford. I swear your hair gets redder when you blush.”

He’s smiling in spite of himself.

 

* * *

 

The ski slopes at the resort are glowing and blue in the dark, almost like the light’s coming from within the mountain.

Eddie’s never been one for skiing so he sticks to the easier slopes. Mason promises that he’ll come join him when he’s done daredeviling with Rose, but Eddie finds him at the end of the night with his ankle all wrapped up and figures he won’t hold him to that promise.

Snowball fights are a different story, and like with anything, he, Mason, and Rose make a fantastic team.

 

* * *

 

In the end he isn’t there to see it. He’s disoriented and turning needy from endorphin withdrawal, barely able to walk, let alone stay and fight.

Rose tells him later that Mason never had a chance. But it was quick, at least.

They hold the funeral at the chapel. Mason’s mom flies in; she’s the other person eulogizing. Eddie’s only met her about three times.

Jesus, he doesn’t remember what he says at the podium, but he knows it’s terrible. He’s pretty sure he dropped the f-bomb once or twice.

At the wake someone tells him, “Those were some beautiful words, what you said.”

Eddie goes to the bathroom and throws up in a toilet.

They make him see a therapist for a few weeks. He gets a guy named Adam, a Moroi, who makes some of the dumbest sympathy faces ever. It’s good for him anyway, which Eddie doesn't realize until he's stopped going; he doesn’t remember any of the shit he learns in his sessions either, but eventually he stops thinking about the what-ifs. He goes to classes and training and lets the routine take him around. Before bed sometimes he breaks into the weight room and goes at a punching bag for a while.

He’s seventeen and he’s alive. It’s a perfectly normal thing to be, and it’s something he’s learning to do without Mason.

 

* * *

 

Now that his best friend is gone, Eddie supposes that everyone he shared Mason with now collectively fills that position. Rose, Shane, Ryan.

He makes sure to take good care of all of them. Maybe they haven’t lost who Eddie’s lost, but they still lost someone all the same. A Mason-shaped someone. He keeps them close, just to try to keep his memory alive.

Rose does too, a little differently than him.

He knows it’s probably just a post-traumatic stress-induced hallucination. He still asks her about him, though, because he wonders how she remembers him: scared and defiant in his last hours, or the Mason who never quite lost his innocence despite being raised a soldier.

 

* * *

 

The night of the attack on St. Vlad’s, Eddie gets knocked out fighting Strigoi on the back lawn of the Academy and wakes up in a cave, huddled among terrified students and teachers. There is the corpse of a girl lying on the ground in front of them, a puncture wound marring her pale neck.

A number of people are crying: loud, gulping sobs, their faces crumpled.

“Shut up!” one of the Strigoi yells, and Eddie can feel the words laced with compulsion.

The people cry silently now.

Eddie’s head is swimming— he must have a concussion or something; there’s a slight bump on the back of his head. He closes his eyes, lets himself drift. One thing’s for sure: the universe isn’t a merciful thing, at least not enough to let him survive this a second time.

But then hands are grabbing him, pulling him up, and he winds up in the sunlight being escorted to the clinic, noticing every little thing. The wind on the back of his head, the dew on the grass. He breathes through his mouth and nose at the same time. It’s enough to make him feel a little heady.

There is a vigil for the dead, a collective funeral at the chapel five days after the raid. Eddie walks there with Rose, silent. They sit together and Eddie thinks of the girl who was drained, of Dimitri, of Mason. He wonders how many people Rose is thinking of.

She’s gone two days later. He knows fuck-all about faith, but still he prays:  _ let her come back to us safe. _

Wherever she is, it’s where she needs to be.

He stays, studies for his physics quizzes, does research for a history paper. His mother calls him to wish him a happy eighteenth birthday. He asks Guardian Petrov to train him for a couple sessions. He sweats. He thinks of starting a journal, like Adam had once suggested months ago.

 

* * *

 

This is life made anew: brother to a human and two royal Moroi. And look, out of the corner of his eye, there’s Mason, now finally his roommate.

Micah. Genuine and earnest and not fucking dumb at all. He can see how Eddie’s about to crawl out of his own skin around him, doesn’t ask what Eddie’s fucking problem is. He stays friendly as ever, smiles when he talks to Eddie and introduces him to his friends.

It takes Eddie two weeks to figure out how to tell him the truth.

“My best friend looked just like you,” he says.

Micah stills. He moves nothing like Mason did, graceful for a human but not nearly enough, and Eddie’s casting away the resemblances day after day.

“But he died last year,” he continues. “Skiing accident.”

“I’m sorry,” Micah says.

“I was in love with him.”

“Oh. Did— did he know?”

“Yeah. But he wasn’t, with me. So that was it. You don’t have to worry about me, like, coming on to you or whatever—”

“No, yeah,” Micah says. “Bro, it’s chill.”

So fucking nice about it. Eddie’s heard that in California people get it more easily. Must be the sun.

It’s as good of a place to wash up as any, he supposes.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he overhears his classmates talking about college applications and AP exams with the kind of overdrawn humor that’s only ever used to hide fear. Micah, apparently, wants to go to Duke and study economics.

For a while he thinks it’s a little bit funny— not in the way that everyone’s trying to pass it off as, just— he was never surrounded by this when he was a novice. Second time going through high school and he still doesn’t have to worry about it himself.

And yet at his first graduation, his mother had traced the white bandage on the back of his neck with near-tangible relief, like she’d finally gotten confirmation that he’d be all right. Like she’d been afraid of him turning out as anything lesser than a soldier. Now, not even nineteen, he’s protecting the princess of the ruling family and wondering if there’s any farther for him to go.

Social mobility is a strange, broad thing in the human world; all these kids born rich and entitled, the sons and daughters of Hollywood producers and Silicon Valley executives still desperate to make it to the far-off places in their minds.

It makes Eddie a little uneasy that things here are different from the world he grew up in, he supposes. Angry when he sees Adrian, drunk and going to L.A. every other day to fuck people like debauchery is about the only thing keeping him from a heartbroken, penniless breakdown.

Adrian thinks he knows heartbreak, huh. Does he even give a shit about what carries over to Jill?

 

* * *

 

And now Eddie wonders if his own heart’s out to kill him. Even when it’s a girl it’s fucking impossible.

Jill’s whip-smart, has the driest humor for a fifteen-year-old, the sharpest eye for how people are feeling, and the most beautiful shit-eating grin he’s ever seen. (Another came close, but that was a different time in his life.)

The harpies at Court are probably matchmaking already, asking Lissa whose nephew or grandson to throw at Jill.

But it’s not like Eddie’s at all better than any of them. He was trained to think with his fists and he barely knows shit about diplomacy or politics. Him, Eddie, sunny tan like a Californian surfer and not even the right fucking species.

_ Let it fucking go, man. _

He never does, but that turns out all right. When it turns out that Angeline’s been cheating on him, he doesn’t really feel anything beyond the basic unpleasantness of having to muster up a reaction to it. Honest to God. She and Trey are good together.

And it’s funny how big things can happen in such small pockets of undiscovered time, like a first kiss while two Strigoi bodies are still on the ground. Eddie realizes that he doesn’t care if everyone sees. Jill smiles at him when they break apart. He smiles back.

He takes everyone— Sydney excluded— to a 24-hour diner on the way back to Amberwood and they learn to laugh at their terror over a shared platter of chicken tenders and fries and mozzarella sticks. Across the table Jill’s laughing as she takes a pull of lemonade. She’d been the one to kiss him.

He doesn’t mind that their friends saw, out here in the human world where a crush is just a crush. But reality is that the quorum law will be repealed sometime in the near future and she’ll go back to Court a full princess and he’ll go back nothing more than  another dhampir bastard-slash-guardian.

But  _ shit _ , he could let himself have this, if he were the selfish type.

When he pulls into Sydney’s usual parking spot and turns off the ignition, he’s still turning over the possibilities and impossibilities of it all in his head.

He says, “Jill, can I walk you back to your room?”

Neil claps him on the shoulder as he climbs out. Eddie isn’t sure if he means  _ congratulations _ or  _ good luck _ .

Outside the entrance to Jill’s building, Eddie turns to face her. “I want to talk about what happened earlier tonight. The kiss.”

Jill sighs, resigned. “I knew you were too quiet at dinner to mean anything good.”

Eddie shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Look— I’m not saying no, okay?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you?”

“No. I— just… give me some time to think. I want to think about it.”

“You want to think about it,” Jill echoes.

“Hey, it’s not easy for me,” he says. “Both saying yes and saying no would be hard.”

“I know,” she tells him, reaching down and taking his hand. “So I’ll let you think about it. Just don’t take too long, okay?”

He nods numbly. She gives him a small, jerky smile good night, then disappears inside. Eddie lets out a slow breath, wondering how any amount of time will ever make it easier for him to decide.

 

* * *

 

For nearly two months he’s terrified that Jill’s gone forever. It’s not even the fact that he’s lost her; he’s never loved selfishly and she’s never belonged to him anyway. But Jill is young and kind and good and everything that deserves a lifetime, and he’ll be damned if he sees fate cheat someone like that out of a chance for a second time.

But in St. George they find her and she finds him, smooths over his scraggly beard with the palms of her hands and calms his wild eyes with her steady gaze. She asks, “Have you been taking care of yourself?”

He laughs, intertwines her fingers with his. “As much as I could. I kinda had bigger things to worry about.”

She shakes her head at him. “I like this—” tugs at a few hairs from his beard with her thumb and forefinger— “But I don’t like what it means. You heroic guardian types always beating yourselves up over things that aren’t your fault.”

“It’s my job,” he says wryly and presses his forehead to hers. “God, I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she whispers. Tilts her chin forward to kiss him.

She’s whisked off to Court before he manages to get used to having her safe with them again, knows that even as all the guardians and Alchemists are packing up their makeshift command center and wrapping up the operation, she’s the only person he’s really paying attention to. Once she’s done feeding, her skin becomes less translucent, and he’s less afraid for her, just a little.

Just before she leaves, he says to her, “Remember when I said I’d think about it?”

She smirks and rolls her eyes affectionately. “Yeah, it kept me up nights.”

Briefly, he wonders if that’s the truth.

“Well,” he says, ducking his head down so he still has the courage to tell her, “I did.”

“And?”

“I think I want to.” He looks up now and feels the right corner of his mouth tug upwards at the sight of her barely-maintained expectancy, then the left side a moment later, out of sync in his confessional rush, feeling the buzzing in his fingertips around hers. “We could do this. Us. I’d like it if we did.”

She laughs softly, touches his face again. “We could, huh?”

 

* * *

 

You can find him now like this: in a two-story house in suburban Maine, like a dog bred for violent things trained to guard a good family. But it isn’t as bad as all that. He’s found a place he never even knew could exist— being a guardian and having the luxury to live an uncomplicated human lifestyle, neither a mercenary nor really truly a watchdog.

He goes for a run every morning, calls Jill every evening. He tells her good morning. She bids him good night. On the weekends they Skype and Sydney and Adrian will pop in to say hi, showing off Declan eagerly. He thinks she must know everything about him now. At night he tends to get nostalgic.

Eddie knows he won’t be here forever. It’s just a matter of time before Jill finishes at Alder and decides whether she wants to take her seat on the Council immediately or head off to college like Lissa. He’ll go back to her then, but for now he’s almost glad for the distance, that they’ve learned how to listen to each others’ voices, that he’s away from the political battles and the thin veneer of diplomacy hiding all the ugliness while he’s still young and hotheaded. Between him and Rose, they could probably stage a coup if a stuffy royal talked shit about the Dragomir line one time too many. Abe would probably provide the explosives.

Strange that he has that in him when most Sunday mornings he sits and reads a book with his slippers on, content to be sedentary and domestic. In his line of work, this is just a moment in between firefights.

The neighbor boys and their friends are in high school. Eddie’s talked to them a few times. They don’t understand why he won’t play basketball in the driveway with them.

When he was younger he and Mason dreamed of killing Strigoi, he remembers.

 

* * *

 

The moment he opens the door, Jill jumps into his arms and kisses him on the mouth. One thing long-distance can’t fulfill is the physicality of a relationship, and it’s not even about sex, just the feeling of being pressed close and comfortable to someone else’s body. Most of the time when they’re apart he doesn’t even notice it. It’s not like the absence of air— it’s something a little harder to reach, the familiarity of sleeping in your own bed, perhaps. The familiarity hits him now, and he tries not to imagine the first few days after she’ll have left, feeling wistful for something he can’t put his finger on.

But—

“You’re here now,” he mumbles into her cheek, feels her grin against his chin.

She steps away after that to greet Adrian, then to coo at Declan when he’s brought downstairs, indulgent the way aunts are. Eddie hugs Rose hello, claps Dimitri on the shoulder. After Sydney comes home, they sit down for dinner.

Everyone’s here now.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Eddie,” Rose says from the doorway of his bedroom, just as he and Jill are about to go to bed. She's dressed in jeans and her t-shirt of the day— not ready for bed, he realizes. She must still be functioning on a primarily nocturnal schedule.

“Hey yourself. You guys settling in okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, we’re good. Just unpacking. Here, I have something to show you. Wanna come to my room?” She jerks her head behind her.

“You wanna come?” he asks Jill.

She shrugs. “Why not?”

They follow Rose to her suitcase, where she pulls out a leather-bound photo album.

“Found a bunch of photos from our academy days in my camera roll,” she says, flipping through the album rapidly before pulling a photo out of its plastic covering and handing it to him.

It's a photo of him and Mason. They're sitting on top of a rock structure on the grounds that they'd liked to think was phallic-shaped. Mason’s making a jack-off gesture at the camera, one eyebrow cocked lewdly. Eddie’s looking at Mason.

Alright, it's more than that. More and less, somehow, because all Eddie’s doing is laughing at Mason being so obscene, almost like he's about to make a dick joke himself. There's nothing lovelorn about it.

For as much as he'd been afraid of it back then, Eddie thinks.

“It's okay if you don't want it,” Rose says hesitantly. “I, uh, I found a bunch of you guys and I thought it'd be good for you to have them. But it's okay if you don't want— I just… thought it might help you remember all the good times you had with him.”

Her hand’s outstretched like she wants to take the photo back from him. Jill’s hand comes up to rest on his shoulder; he relaxes with a slow breath and swallows.

He says, “No. I mean, thank you for this. I really appreciate it, Rose.” He looks up at her again. “Can— can I see the others?”

“Oh,” says Rose. “Sure, yeah.” She goes through the album again, pulls out a few more photographs. Some of them are just him and Mason; some of them have Ryan or Shane or Christian; some even Rose herself. In all of them, he and Mason are side by side, grinning like they're sharing a private joke.

Eddie touches their glossy surfaces gently, one-fingered.

“You know,” he says. “I still remember all of this.”

How shitty Mason’s dancing had been, gyrating to the hip-hop songs on his mp3 player. How they'd had contests over catching food in their mouths. How protective of each other they'd been.

How badly Eddie had loved him.

Then, the truth out loud: “But I don't remember when it was that it stopped hurting so much.”

Rose looks at him. “Me neither. Getting older’s funny that way, I guess.”

“You children,” Dimitri says suddenly, dryly, from the doorway. “What do you know about getting old?”

Eddie meets Rose’s eyes and then they’re laughing until they’re clutching their bellies, doubled up.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to objectiveheartmuscle and lorcleis for betaing this for me.


End file.
